In peace time depots and workshops there is a need for providing service, repair and maintenance of vehicles and other heavy equipment. In such activities it is often necessary to lift a powerpack, a weapon system or other heavy equipment. In a depot there is usually a permanently installed bridge crane for providing such lifting capacity. A bridge crane is thus a compulsory facility in a in order to provide the servicing, repair and maintenance work.
In field conditions, such as crisis areas, it is often not possible to have permanent bridge crane installations, as providing proper workshops in field conditions is not logistically and economically feasible. In such conditions the lifting is commonly done with a mobile crane. However, there are some problems related to this solution. There is a high investment and maintenance cost in using a mobile crane. It is also an expensive and dangerous procedure to transfer a mobile crane to a crisis area. If a mobile crane is available in a crisis area it is usually needed for other tasks as well, and the mobile crane may therefore not be available for the service and repair work. A mobile crane is also slow, inaccurate and not very stable compared to a bridge crane. A mobile crane also has no ballistic or mine protection and is therefore highly dangerous to move by driving to the destination from a main airport, for example. It also requires a trained person for using the mobile crane, whereby there is a risk that such a person is not always available when the mobile crane is needed. There is another known solution based on using armoured recovery vehicles for the lifting. However, this solution has some similar problems as using a mobile crane.
There is a further prior art solution of using a movable A-type bridge crane. However, such movable A-type bridge cranes are only suitable for plain, hard ground. If used on a soft or uneven ground there is a risk of overturning. Such movable A-type bridge cranes only move a load in vertical and transverse directions, they do not offer a possibility to move the load in longitudinal direction. They are usually also not designed for very heavy loads and have limited/restricted lifting capacity. A lifting capacity of several tons is desirable.
It is inevitable to have lifting capacity in order to provide e.g. required servicing for vehicles, among other required tasks. The insufficient lifting resources have a consequence that the vehicles and other heavy equipment are not serviced and repaired properly or maintained according to maintenance schedules. This may cause additional risks and additional life cycle costs in using the vehicles.